She hesitated before answering him.
“I will attempt to protect you if we get caught, and take the blame myself,” he promised her. She was in so deep for the children that taking an additional risk for the art didn’t worry her. And he was right, their national art treasures belonged in France, and everyone knew that the Germans had been stealing them all through the Occupation. Whatever he could save now, at the end, was just a fraction of what they’d lost, but it seemed worth doing. She nodded in answer, and he smiled at her. “Perhaps we can establish a little routine of having coffee together in the evening, and I will give you a loaf of fresh bread for your mother every night, as a token of my appreciation for having lived in your beautiful home for four years.”
She was immensely relieved he had made no sexual overtures to her, nor discovered her work for the OSE. Hiding art for him seemed like very little to ask, even if it was also risky, for both of them.
“I am very grateful for your collaboration on this. I think we’re doing something important for France. I love it here, and I would like to give something back for all the damage we’ve done.” He looked at her pointedly, and she understood. Returning artwork to the Louvre did not compensate for her father’s death, and others, but it was something he could do. “You must promise me that you will return all of it to the national museums once we leave. The Jeu de Paume or the Louvre. They will return it where it belongs, and trace the pieces that were privately owned.”
“Of course,” she assured him, and he was certain that she would do as she promised. He had watched her for almost four years, and had a good sense of her character and morals. He had no doubt that she would do as he asked. He was certain he hadn’t misjudged her.
He gave her a loaf of bread when she left the living room then, and she carried it carefully up the stairs. Bread, and a baguette in particular, had become the forbidden food during the war, and nearly impossible to get with rationing. So it was an enormous treat. And once in the safety of her tiny attic room, she pulled the two halves apart that had been pressed together, and saw a small rolled-up canvas inside, wrapped in special paper, and she took it out, unrolled it, and spread it out on her bed. It was a small Renoir, of the head of a child. She stared at it for a long time, and then rolled it up again, and hid it at the back of a drawer. She knew she’d have to find a better hiding place, particularly once he gave her more canvases. She wondered what her father would think of what she was doing, but she had a feeling he’d approve, and she went to bed, considering all that the commandant had said, and the faith he had in her, and the Renoir rolled up in the drawer. She carefully preserved the bread with the hollowed-out inside to give to her mother the next day.
In the morning, she went for a long walk around the estate, until she reached her father’s grave.
“So what do you think, Papa?” she said out loud. There were the children she had saved, and now the art. The children meant far more to her, and were tied to Rebekah and her family for Gaëlle, but hiding major artworks to be returned to the Louvre one day, after the war, was a worthy project too. She wondered how many he would entrust to her before the Germans would be gone. She liked looking forward to the day when their home would be their own again, and maybe one day her mother would return to health, and Rebekah would come home. It was nice to dream of seeing her again. On her way back from the cemetery, Gaëlle stopped at the orchard shed and found a good hiding place for the next paintings he would give her. It was in a cool dry spot, behind a cabinet where no one would find them. She thought of the children she had hidden there in the last eighteen months, Jacob and all the others. There had even been so many babies entrusted to them by mothers who were desperate to get their newborns and infants out of France to safety, not even knowing into whose hands they would fall. But anything would be better than being sent to labor camps that were openly being called extermination camps now for the elimination of Jews. Gaëlle could only pray that Rebekah and her family hadn’t been sent to one of them.
For all of June and July, the commandant had Gaëlle come to his room after dinner. She went to her parents’ bedroom, which he had occupied since he’d arrived, having realized that if he met with her in the living room, one of his officers could walk in, and he wanted privacy when he met with her, so no one would discover their exchange. All they would have seen would have been a loaf of bread, occasionally some cheese, some summer fruit from the orchards, or the dried meats the German soldiers loved. He had chocolates for her occasionally, and rather than sending his soldiers to fetch her when he had a painting for her, he sent Apolline, which seemed more discreet. But after two months of their private meetings, no one had any doubt of what was happening behind closed doors. She would emerge with her hands full of food, and a precious baguette of bread under her arm. He had his personal chef make it just for her, allegedly for her mother. And the commandant would conceal a painting in it himself, after he took it to his room, in preparation for Gaëlle.
Apolline looked at her in disgust one night when she came out of the commandant’s room. “So you’re selling your body now for a piece of cheese and a loaf of bread. I never thought you’d come to that.” She stared with revulsion at the girl she had helped to raise. “My son and your father died heroes’ deaths, and you are whoring yourself out now to the Germans. I’m glad your mother is too sick to understand what you’re doing. She doesn’t eat the bread anyway. I don’t know why you bother.” She considered Gaëlle as low as any prostitute, and there was nothing she could say to defend herself. Gaëlle was sworn to secrecy by the commandant, and she didn’t dare tell even Apolline that there were more than forty important artworks hidden in the orchard shed. Renoirs, several Degases, Corots, Pissarros, two small Monets. All the great masters of France were represented among the canvases he had given her. His friend in Paris, whose name Gaëlle never knew, was instructed to ship the paintings safely out of France and instead was sending them to his friend in Lyon, to be hidden and eventually returned by Gaëlle. But no one could know, and she had no defense against Apolline’s accusations. She had to accept being called a whore, and considered one. The officers and enlisted men in his command thought much the same, although they were amused that in the final days of the war, the commandant had started an affair with a nineteen-year-old French girl. As far as they were concerned, she was part of the spoils of war too.